


Ghosts and Coffee Breaks

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-31
Updated: 2009-08-31
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Ghost!Spike and Undead Lilah meet when trying to sneak a smoke.





	Ghosts and Coffee Breaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glassdarkly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glassdarkly/gifts).



> For shapinglight who asked for: AtS Season 5 Ghost!Spike and Undead Lilah. I feel they should have met somehow.
> 
> They should have! And this is an excellent, interesting prompt - that I went and put off until the last minute. Well, it's still August in MY time zone... ;)
> 
> No warnings, really, it's pretty gen. Maybe some cussing here and there - I'm so desensitized to it I forget I'm doing it! *blush*

Spike watched the woman sitting on the stairs open a package of cigarettes with fumbling, unsure fingers. She was quite a looker, long straight legs that went on for miles up her smart wool skirt, but her face was set in a frown of frustration and she kept touching a paisley scarf around her neck.

Three tries on the lighter didn’t work and she hissed, “Damn it!”

“I’d help, love, but my lighter’s as ghostly as the rest of me.”

She jumped, and Spike realized he must have been invisible again. It would be really nice to  _know_  when that happened, like in films when they slap a grey filter on the invisible man’s perspective.

Spike crouched down to her level and held out a hand, even though she couldn’t take it. “Name’s Spike. Didn’t mean to scare you, love.”

She squirmed backward on the step, as though about to escape, then stopped. “I know what you are.”

Spike scowled. “’What’, she says. Ta.”

She started to laugh, then winced, touching her throat. “You’re the ghost of a vampire. Man up.” She resumed fussing with her lighter.

Spike reached for the lighter, his fingertips passing through hers. She looked up, irritated on the surface – that hard surface to hide the hurt underneath – oh, Spike knew a thing or two about that. He gestured, “There’s a paper tab, see? Over the wheel. Got to pull that out before the lighter will work.”

She rolled her eyes extravagantly and tore the paper tab out like it had personally insulted her. Two flicks and the flame stood tall. Spike itched to adjust it. She lit her cigarette and coughed, just a little, blowing out the first plume of smoke.

Spike didn’t feel the smoke pass through him, didn’t smell the acrid tang of igniting tobacco. Did NOT want to admit he was brooding. He stood, taking out his own lighter - it was in his pocket when he went up, so now there it was. He couldn’t feel it, the cold metal smooth on his fingertips – but he could think he was taking his lighter out and there it was. He turned it over in his fingers, not feeling it. The surface reflected him, his hand, the black leather of his duster, but nothing else. It was like, as far as the lighter knew, he was alone in a grey room. Strange reversal on normality, but Spike never did understand the mirror thing.

“Lilah Morgan,” the woman said, and extended a hand toward him. He looked at her long, elegant fingers, no doubt looking as helpless as he felt. She shrugged, putting the hand back in her pocket. 

“So what do you do here,” Spike smiled his best flirtatious smile.

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, I…”

A man in a suit entered the stairwell half a flight up. “There you are! Lilah, I want those files today. And stop by the commissary on your way back. Two cream, no sugar.”

Lilah jumped to her feet. “Mr. Stephens. I was just…”

“Hiding in the stairwell.” He trotted down the stairs. “Get back to work. And don’t forget my coffee.” He slapped her on the ass and left.

For a moment, she stood very still, and then Lilah ground her freshly-lit cigarette under her toe. “I have a PhD and a JD,” she said. “Top of my class at Brown.”

“And now you fetch coffee for prats.”

“Death is hell on a gal’s career,” she said, and stomped out of the stairwell as though punishing the floor with her five-inch heels. “I begged on my  _knees_  for the liaison job, and they give it some senior partner’s niece. Nepotism rules, even in hell! I worked hard, damn hard, and who kills me? Someone trying to GET Angel. Who, incidentally, manages to get to be CEO for all he has done, what? Making my bosses’ lives hard?”

Spike passed through the swinging door. She didn’t look behind herself when she said, “And stop following me.”

“Got nothing better to do. Believe me.” He smiled with sad fondness at the way her rear filled out the wool pencil skirt. “Come on. What landed Miss Top of the Class at Brown in this hell-hole?”

There was a long line in the commissary. She stopped, hands on hips, and cursed under her breath. “This isn’t hell,” she said. “Believe me, I know.”

“Hell’s over-rated. They’ll let anyone in.”

“Why are you still following me?”

“Why do you let that berk talk to you like that?”

“Because, the minute I stop being ‘useful’, I go back to the holding dimension.” She made air quotes. “So now I’m stuck kissing the ass of a brown-noser that would make Gavin sick to his stomach.” She grimaced. “Not that you know who that is. Real jerk. Got turned into a zombie.”

“Lot of that going around. This place is hell on life expectancy.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the after-life-expectancy that’s really pissing me off.”

Spike slipped in front of her, half in the guy in front of her in line, who turned and complained, but really, what was he going to do? Hit him? “Don’t get the berk coffee.”

“I’m sorry, is the ghost of a dead man giving me orders?”

She stepped forward with the line, almost into him. Spike had to back up. “I know what it’s like to die by degrees, and what it’s like to leap face first into hell. So believe me when I say the latter beats the former.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.” She grimaced, touching her neck again. “There’s no way out for me. It’s work my ass off here, and maybe, someday…”

“’Maybe someday’ never got anyone his balls back.”

They reached the counter. Spike tried waving his arm in the way, but she stuck her hand right through him and picked up a coffee cup. “It’s suburbia,” she said, picking up the creamers. “I’m a little, perfect, housewife.” She turned to give him a viciously insincere smile.

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Real personal, those hells, eh?”

“So, if you excuse me, I’m not about to risk being sent back there.”

“Watching a beautiful woman like you cater to an absolute git like that makes this place even more of a hell than it already was.”

She stopped, looking down at the cup, then raised an eyebrow. “I am going to spit in it, though.”

Spike smiled. “That’s my girl.”

She raised the cup, toasting him. “To the trapped,” she said.

“And the dead sexy,” he added, and watched her evil grin as she took a sip and then spit it back into the cup. “I’ll go invisible, yeah? And watch him drink it!”

Lilah smirked, but nodded, very slightly, and as she walked back to her office there was a confidence and joy in her step that had been lacking.

Life, or death, was going to be more fun with an accomplice.

THE END


End file.
